Interesting quote in there, where they describe the problem as being parallel runways, where landing aircraft are on the outboard runway, and have to cross the inner, where planes are taking off, to taxi to gates.

ATL has exactly the same setup, and therefore should have the same hazards described in the article. So why isn't it a problem there?

I fly out of ATL weekly (based in Atlanta, I'm a heavy DL flyer) and have often landed there and sat, waiting, along with 8-10 other planes, at the crossovers waiting for the line of departing airliners to clear before all of us are cleared across the inboard runway. System seems to work pretty well.

Obviously it relies on all the pilots actually STOPPING when/where they are supposed to, as mentioned in the article ... but considering ATL's so busy, why didn't it rate a mention in the article, and if not, what is different about its operations compared to LAX or the other california airports mentioned?

Litz: to answer your question between LAX and ATL. ATL has taxiways in between the runways. LAX is very close to the FAA min's of seperation between runways. LAX 25R/L and 24R/L are around 750-800ft. apart from and obviously no room for a taxiway in between. Another reason may be the huge amount of foriegn carriers at LAX vs. ATL which or mostly domestic.

Quoting AS739X (Reply 2):Litz: to answer your question between LAX and ATL. ATL has taxiways in between the runways. LAX is very close to the FAA min's of seperation between runways. LAX 25R/L and 24R/L are around 750-800ft. apart from and obviously no room for a taxiway in between. Another reason may be the huge amount of foriegn carriers at LAX vs. ATL which or mostly domestic.

ORD is supposed to have 6 east-west runways, when the reconfiguration is completed years from now. One of the complaints from the controllers union is that the number of aircraft having to cross an active runway goes up a lot over the current configuration.

On the other hand, 5 of the 6 runways at ORD intersect with another runway. 22L-4R doesn't, but an aircraft departing 22L often has to hold short by a couple of hundred feet, because aircraft arriving on 27L fly over the taxiway to 22L. To me, this is a far more dangerous configuration that what is at ATL or LAX.

While not all of the incidents and accidents involved foreign carriers, I think that the language barrier between foreign pilots and the controller is sometimes very challenging especially when non-routine instruction is given. Consider the number of foreign carriers flying in and out of LAX. It is not quite the same scenario with DFW and ATL. The number of non-English speaking (not even as a second language) is probably safe to say one of the highest in the United States in LAX (maybe JFK too) The article does not mention anything of it but I think it may be a small contributing factor that someone can look into.

Quoting Go3Team (Reply 6):Wouldn't DFW rate up there with the way their runways are setup? Theres are pretty close together as well.

Uh, no. DFW has very large spaces between their runways when compared to LAX.

Quoting Litz (Thread starter):I fly out of ATL weekly (based in Atlanta, I'm a heavy DL flyer) and have often landed there and sat, waiting, along with 8-10 other planes, at the crossovers waiting for the line of departing airliners to clear before all of us are cleared across the inboard runway. System seems to work pretty well.

PHX has the same setup for the south runways (land outboard, take off inboard), with aircraft waiting to cross all at once. It works well there, and usually there are aircraft at crossing points up and down the runway, so it happens pretty quicklyy. PHX also has a high frequency of runway incursions (or did) But, IIRC, it had mostly to do with the north runway?